Did I blasphemy the Holy Spirit

@Tea and Honey Thank you for this. You have no idea how big of a weight has been lifted off my shoulders. Thank you for being so kind.

@Tea and Honey I would absolutely love to

@Ginabobina! I am here. I’ll help you if I can

@Tea and Honey I still have so much anxiety. I’ve been so nauseous all day over this. Any tips? I’ve tried everything. I’ve prayed and talked to God about 15 times.

@Ginabobina! I have a ton of things to say. You are going to have a lot more intrusive thoughts like that just pop in your brain. You should expect this. It is part of OCD. And they will pop up exactly in the times you don’t want them (for example, after you have a wonderful moment with God or in the middle of something good and exciting, etc.) That’s what intrusive thoughts do. You have to expect this. The point is that you can’t give the intrusive thoughts any power. You have to tell yourself, “I can have intrusive thoughts now, five minutes from now, tomorrow, 1,000 times a day, whatever. They can be in my brain however much they want. I don’t care. It doesn’t matter.” This is the truth: Those thoughts don’t mean anything. People with OCD have intrusive thoughts along different themes (depending on their values). People who value relationships have bad thoughts about their boyfriends or girlfriends. People who value the innocence of children have intrusive thoughts about pedophilia. People who value God have intrusive thoughts that are negative against God. Beginning when I was 14 years old, I had constant blasphemous sentences in my head against God. There is much more to this story, but God has been healing me of this OCD, little by little, ever since a very significant point in my 20s. At one point in my journey, God was leading me to just let the thoughts run in my head (without trying to fix them or fight them off). This means you should not rebuke the intrusive thoughts. You don’t have to feel bad about them. You can just let them be there all that they want to. I took the step of faith to let my thoughts run (even though that was a bit scary), and it was a huge step of healing for me. My intrusive thoughts went away shortly after that. So maybe 16 years later, I started therapy with NOCD. (Even though the intrusive thoughts went away, I still struggle with other parts of the OCD every day to this day. But I am getting better every day also.) While I was in therapy just a few years ago, I learned the basic tenants of ERP therapy. (ERP therapy is usually the absolute best way to treat OCD.) One of the tenants of ERP therapy is to let your thoughts “run” freely in your head without trying to stop them or fix them. This was exactly what I felt God leading me to do so many years ago and which led to the end of my intrusive thoughts. My NOCD therapist explained it like this: Imagine a tree planted by a river. The leaves keep falling off the tree and floating down the river. You can notice that the leaves are falling, but you don’t do anything to stop them. You just let them fall and float down the river. Your thoughts are like the leaves. You can notice your thoughts. But don’t try to stop them. Don’t try to fix them. Just let them go and float down the river. So let’s talk about your situation. You had a moment with God, and then the intrusive thought popped up. Yep. That’s going to happen. Don’t do anything about it. Nothing is wrong. You are not in danger. I’ll talk more in a second.

@Tea and Honey Let’s keep talking about this. OCD takes a long time to work though. I’ll also link you to a couple resources that really helped me, as a Christian who struggles with OCD. But please keep writing to me!! We can talk about everything. I have so much to say!!!! And would love to be able to share! https://scrupulosity.com/ https://youtube.com/shorts/YKSXP7MgMIE?si=UsfvgngMHKl0zMXn Mark DeJesus’ YouTube channel has lots of episodes about dealing with OCD. He is a Christian minister who struggles with OCD himself. I just have a short sample of him here, but you can find a lot more on his channel.

@Tea and Honey I felt god lift the anxiety off of my chest and I was so happy that I felt god change that for me. It wasn’t 5 minutes later my mind instantly went to “what if that was the devil trying to deceive me” then I thought that that was blaspheming the holy spirt because I said his works could have been the devils. I feel hopeless. Reading your text made me feel a little better

@Ginabobina! Yes, this is exactly the pattern of OCD. I understand this PERFECTLY. I deal with this every day, and I have dealt with this for years. OCD is going to take some time for you to process through. And it’s going to take a lot of practice. It’s OK that it’s going to take time. Consider yourself on a journey. As Mark DeJesus says, “It will take as long as it takes.” So don’t put a time limit on your recovery. Actually, God will use this trial in your life to increase your faith and trust in Him. One of the most important things that we need to learn is to put our faith in his truth over our feelings. When you have OCD, you will have a chance to practice this principle over and over every day. So when your intrusive thoughts pop up like they did just now, consider it an opportunity to practice your faith. Here’s what you have to practice: You are going to practice exercising faith that you are still saved, and that the thoughts mean nothing (even though your brain tells you that all is lost). In other words, you practice having faith in these truths, even though your brain, heart, and body are going to tell you that you are probably doomed because of blasphemy. This is an exercise of pure faith. The Bible says that Abraham believed God that he would have a son, even though when he looked at his own body, he had no evidence to believe. In fact, his body was old and shriveled and dead. In fact, all of the physical evidence around him said that God’s promise of a son would never come true. But Abraham believed anyway. You have to practice believing the truth that the thoughts mean nothing, even though everything inside you feels like it’s dying because you are worried that the thoughts are blasphemous. I have dealt with this so much in my life. I totally understand it. You are OK. It’s just time for you to start practicing and to start taking baby steps on your journey of healing. And that’s exciting! You have started your journey of healing. And God will make you better and better along the way. So let’s apply this to you specifically. You had what I call an “episode” of feeling like you did something blasphemous. I have those “episodes” often. There are a variety of ways to make these “episodes” easier on yourself. I would love to talk to you about them more. For now, I’ll give you one way to handle the episodes. I often do what my mother-in-law has called “swimming parallel“: After an episode, my body is physically upset in my chest, etc. My feelings are all over the place and feel terrible. My brain is telling me I’m probably going to hell. In my worst episodes , I don’t feel like doing anything but curling up in bed. But I have learned to keep going about life, in effect to “swim parallel” to the shores of living a normal life, by doing the same things that I would normally do, even though my body and my feelings are doing terrible. For example, I’ll still go to the store and make lunches and go for walks, even though I can’t escape the feelings. Eventually, the episode will pass, and the feelings will go away—and I can go back to the shores of normal life. Is there a Bible verse that assures you of your salvation that you can hold on to and look at when you have episodes? That can also be really good. Remember, these episodes are GOING TO HAPPEN, and they will probably happen often. It’s OK if they happen 100x a day, or 2x a week. It doesn’t matter. Just expect that you will have them. Don’t try to stop them or fight them off. The more you practice dealing with the episodes, the easier they will get. In fact, the more you practice dealing with episodes smaller OCD gets in general.